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Union asks for six pay increases over next year to make up for lost step raises

The Palm Beach County Classroom Teacher’s Association union today asked the school district to “make teachers whole” by giving them up to six pay increases over the next year.

“We have to find a way to get a light at the end of the tunnel,” said union negotiator Brian Phillips as the union presented its proposed salary plan during collective bargaining. “We believe there is money available that we can use to make this happen.”

The union’s proposal would move all teachers one “step” up the district’s established annual pay scale on Aug. 14, the first day teachers report back to work for the coming school year. The pay scale ranges from $37,322 for a beginning teacher to $66,700 for a teacher with 26 years of experience.

Teachers used to receive “step raises” for each year of experience, but those raises have been frozen for five years. In order to make teachers “whole” for the step raises they lost out on in the past, the union is proposing that teachers who worked and missed out on last year’s pay raise would be have their salary moved one more step up the schedule on Dec. 1.

Teachers who have missed two years of past raises would have their pay moved another step up the scale on March 31, 2013. And under the union’s proposal, teachers who have missed three raises would get another step on June 1, 2013; while teachers who have missed four raises, would get another step on July 31, 2013; and teachers who have missed five raises would get another step in August of 2013

Jupiter High School media specialist Les Kozlow said the union is not asking for raises, but for teachers to be put at the steps they deserve to be based on the district’s approved salary scale.

“I’m not asking for more than a 12-year teacher should be paid,” Kozlow said Wednesday. “Just give us what you promised us to come here.”

The union’s Phillips did not provide a total cost estimate for the raises. But district Chief Operating Officer Mike Burke has previously estimated that each step raise would cost the district about $14 million, meaning six step raises could cost as much as $84 million. Phillips said the proposal would probably cost less because not all teachers would get all the back steps, and the phased in raises would not be retroactive.

Chief District Negotiator Van Ludy said restoring all the lost step raises “is out of the realm of possibility” because of the district’s budget woes.

“Even if it was $50 million, or $30 million that money is not there,” Ludy said.

Phillips disagreed, saying that the money is there. He handed out an analysis of the district’s general fund expenditures on instruction, including teacher salaries for the 2010-2011 school year that shows the district spent about $98 million less than originally budgeted. Phillips said the district has been budgeting too high on instruction for years. He said the difference between what’s budgeted and actually spent could fund the proposed raises.

Phillips also pointed out that the district budgets about $48,400 for each new teacher hired but most new hires in recent years have been beginning teachers at the very bottom of the salary scale. The difference between budgeted and actual salaries for new hires amounted to at least a $13.8 million surplus this past year, Phillips estimated.

District Budget Director Shirley Knox said that surplus is already being used by the district to plug other budget shortfalls, and avoid program cuts this coming school year. She also said the union’s estimates based on the 2011 school year were flawed, because last year the district hired 300 more teachers to meet class-size limits and is hiring another 89 new teachers to meet class-size limits this year.

Ludy said school board members no longer feel like step raises are a feasible salary scale to administer anyway because starting in the 2014 school year the district is required by state law to move to a merit pay system where raises are determined based on things like teacher evaluations. He said the district is interested in instead creating a “minimum-maximum” scale where teachers who get the highest evaluations get the highest percentage raises, and teachers with the lowest evaluations get the lowest percentage or no raises.

He said the school board might be willing to create some sort of “recognition” of the lost raises for teachers but that would only amount to paying for partial step increases at best and only if the district has the money to find it.